Tuesday, December 6, 2016

The Night Tells All, But Says Nothing

I have learned a lot. When the white-tailed antelope squirrel sound the alarm, if you know their sound, there is a predator. If the birds keep feeding, it's a ground predator. If everybody goes to earth or bush, it's an air predator. If you can identify which white-tailed sounded the alarm, look where it is looking, and that's where the predator is. If there's rustling in the bushes, it's not there. If none of the little people are moving in an area, it's there. If the warning tails off at the end, the predator is leaving. If the warning continues, every six or seven seconds, the predator is here and waiting for somebody to make a mistake. So says the day time.

The night time also talks, if you know what to listen for. The 3rd time in a week there is a heavy noise on the back porch. I don't go out on the back porch to see. I open the door to the front porch. If there are no fox eyes staring back at me in the headlamp, if there isn't a skunk in the hole, if the ringtails aren't in the rafters, and no raccoons are on the porch, something everyone fears, is here.

Three guys staying next door said they tracked her into the canyon yesterday and saw a near miss where she almost got a deer. Almost. She's still hungry.

On this night there are no eyes reflecting back at me and I am alone on the porch. Nobody wants a hot dog? Or nobody wants to die for a hot dog. It's quiet and eerie, a slight moon, wind just tickling me, the night talks to me, I am listening, the mountain lion is here.

"I got a monster in my closet
Someone's underneath my bed
The wind's knocking at my window
I'd kill it but it's already dead
I'm just waiting for the sun to rise
Oh how I wish that old sun would rise"